Ground Control concentrated on pure, straightforward RTS action with no resource management, with the catch being the command vehicle has to survive. Here, there are 15 more levels of organised mayhem on three worlds, together with the regular extra multiplayer and skirmish maps. The Dark Conspiracy mission pack starts where the original left off, with the protagonist Major Sarah Parker stranded on planet Krig with an unknown future based on her fateful choices at the end of the original game. The first mission is deceptively simple; but then from level two onwards it's a tooth-and-nail war of attrition with little respite. The lack of in-game save and limited resources make you treasure every unit even more so than in the original game, as new orders arrive mid-level; and friendly fire can cost you the mission if it happens often enough. Then there's the mastery of the camera; if you can't match up the displays and follow the path of every unit, once again you'll suffer needless losses that stop your progress. "Stray Unit Syndrome" has crept in at times, which didn't affect the original; however It's another reason to pick the right formation to move a whole squad. If you have Ground Control but haven't played in a while, go back to the training mode to get re-acquainted as it tends to assume you're an expert. There's little blood as the units are seen (and destroyed) from vehicle view. Dark Conspiracy's 400Mb HDD space requirements put a full install of original and add-on at nearly a gigabyte, but this thankfully doesn't detract from the quality of the software. --Kenneth Henry